If Armen Recard really wished Ikenna Gevrik "well" on his "task," then he would know better than to address the man by only his first name. All was well and fine when Ikenna called the Head of Transportation, "Armen," but the reverse did not hold true.

As it was, the dark man lounging in the comfortable desk chair stiffened slightly, now on edge because of what had been said...or what had not needed to be said. Ikenna's eyes never left Armen's as his searching gaze probed the man's emotions. With just his one remark about Armen's past, the younger man had gone from boiling with anger to being frozen with that horrific realization of danger. Ikenna was ever so fond of small epiphanies like those.

It was the overly blank face and attempts to calm his expression that gave Armen away. Briefly, Gevrik had the fleeting notion to ask the man if he had ever won a hand of wizard poker but dismissed the idea, as entertaining as the response may prove to be.

Instead, the Head of Security calmly shook his head and tightened his grip on the two wands in his current possession.

"Not all of us 'distrust' the Ministry, exactly," he corrected Armen's thought process aloud, thus admitting to several things the man feared the most. "Especially not now, you see."

He smirked and rose from the other man's desk chair, stretching his long legs out as he paced around the desk and came to lean on its edge just in front of where Recard was sitting. "I was trying to make you see that your past is not something to dismiss so lightly, my friend. You cannot run from it, you cannot hide it, you cannot lock it away in a random filing cabinet. Your record as Head of the Department of Transportation is not the beacon on your resume that you think it is.

"As I mentioned before...I am sure you have other skills that could be of more use to certain key people in the Ministry now...and it would be in your best interests to cooperate instead of attempt to dismiss one of these leaders from your office."

Gevrik let a very thick silence fall with his last words, as something of a last attempt to get through to Armen what he wanted. He needed to hear confirmation out loud that he was going to work with Ikenna's organisation and not against it.

Because if not... well, Mr. Gevrik always had been fond of two highly useful, somewhat frowned-upon, spells.